Aviation Policy News: NTSB hearing details FAA institutional failure

In this issue:

• NTSB hearing details FAA institutional failure
• Using commercial space for a return to the Moon
• Problems with U.S. remote air traffic towers
• Will a helicopter company be a winner for Joby?
• Will secondary cockpit barriers be delayed again?
• News notes
• Quotable quotes

NTSB Hearing Details FAA Institutional Failure

The three-day hearings of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) on the Ronald Reagan National Airport collision (July 30-Aug. 1) revealed more than most people knew about how U.S. air traffic control works—and doesn’t work. Former NTSB official Jeff Guzzetti called the hearing “the FAA’s day of reckoning,” focusing on both more flights than Reagan National Airport (DCA) can safely handle and the airport’s inadequate air traffic controller staffing. But much of the witness testimony revealed deeper Federal Aviation Administration institutional problems.

The FAA makes use of a database, developed by MITRE, called the Aviation Risk Identification and Assessment (ARIA) tool. During a three-year time period prior to the fatal collision in January, ARIA flagged 874 incidents at Reagan National for review via Preliminary Action Reports (PARs). Out of all those PARs, the Air Traffic Organization (ATO) chief operating officer (Nick Fuller) said, none were identified as near-mid-air collision risks (NMACs).

But that was not the only source of information about the hazard of helicopter Route 4 crossing under the approach to Runway 33, where the collision occurred. NTSB also pointed out a second source of data: the NASA-managed Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP), under which aviation participants can report hazards anonymously—including pilots, controllers, and others. Between Feb. 2020 and Oct. 2024, there were 85 ASAP reports from pilots about close calls between helicopters and commercial aircraft near DCA. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy expressed amazement that none of those reports had led to any known concerns or action by the FAA.

Other testimony reported that an ad-hoc group of air traffic controllers in the D.C. metro area had surveyed the airspace around Reagan National and proposed removing Route 4, but an FAA manager, they said, declared that such a change was “too political” to take any action on. Controllers working at DCA had also asked management to reduce the level of arrivals and departures at the airport, but that recommendation likewise went nowhere. After the first day’s hearing, Chair Homendy commented as follows:

“FAA is so bureaucratic that nobody can take what is clearly a safety issue and get it up through the offices that should be making the decisions to ensure safety in the airspace. Or, somebody is ignoring them, maybe. I also have concerns that there’s a safety culture problem within the Air Traffic Organization of FAA.”

As I wrote in the first paragraph, the problem is institutional, as Homendy suggested. We all know that “FAA’s number one job is aviation safety.” But is that how it actually operates?

FAA regulates airlines, general aviation, pilots, mechanics, aircraft producers, engine producers, repair stations, airports, etc. It does this at arm’s length, as any regulator should. Yet the Air Traffic Organization is unlike all the other regulated aviation entities: it is housed within the FAA. That means the ATO has never been regulated at arm’s length, like Delta Airlines, Boeing, LAX, and all the other players. Self-regulation has dramatized its failure in the horrible tragedy that took 67 lives in the crash near Reagan National.

This dangerous conflict of interest has been illustrated by the failures NTSB is documenting. But this is hardly a new subject. FAA self-regulation has been criticized for many years by former FAA administrators, ATO chief operating officers, and numerous aviation safety experts. In their excellent book Managing the Skies (2007), Clinton Oster and John Strong explained the inevitable conflicts of interest that arise in self-regulation at the FAA. They also noted that, “Throughout the world, when air traffic organizations have been reorganized along commercial principles, countries have consistently taken the step of separating regulation of the air traffic control system from its operation.”

They also provided examples of ways in which “FAA has allowed itself to short-change safety in ways it would not tolerate in air carrier, commuter, and corporate flight operations.” Moreover, organizational separation of air traffic control and aviation safety regulation has been ICAO policy since 2001. The United States is one of the last holdouts.

If Congress were serious about reforms to the FAA in the wake of the Reagan National tragedy, it would enact legislation to separate the Air Traffic Organization from the FAA, making it a separate modal agency within the transportation department. The much-smaller FAA (as safety regulator) would be analogous to the Department of Transportation’s other safety regulators, and should be physically located at the DOT headquarters, not in the “FAA building.”

Yet during the same week these NTSB hearings were going on, the Senate Appropriations Committee included in its FY2026 spending bill for DOT a prohibition on using any DOT funding to “plan, design, or implement the privatization or separation of FAA’s Air Traffic Organization functions.” Needless to say, there is no pending legislation on “privatizing” the ATO. But separating it from the FAA is precisely what NTSB’s findings indicate to resolve long-standing problems that led to the DCA tragedy.

» return to top

Using Commercial Space for Returning to the Moon  

According to a just-released Reason Foundation study by aerospace engineer Rand Simberg, NASA’s return-humans-to-the-Moon program is failing in its goal of returning Americans to the Moon this decade.

Conceived as a modernized version of the Apollo program of 50 years ago, NASA’s program is based on a massive launch vehicle (SLS), an adaptation of the Apollo capsule, and uses “proven” components from the fatally flawed Space Shuttle program—refurbished engines and modified solid rocket boosters. All are being delivered under sole-source, cost-plus contracts, and all are years behind schedule and hugely over budget. And all but one of the key components are not reusable, a major innovation that this program largely ignores. The SLS program has already consumed $90 billion and has thus far carried out only one SLS test launch. If NASA proceeds with all six planned SLS launches through 2031, the average total cost of each mission would be around $30 billion.

Instead of continuing this failed program, the study calls for cancelling it and replacing it with competitive, fixed-price public-private partnerships like those NASA is using to transport cargo and crew to the International Space Station, procure lunar landers and lunar rovers, and even obtain new space suits. Terminating the SLS program, including the Orion capsule, the Upper Stage (EUS), the new launch tower (ML-2), and the Gateway lunar-orbit station, would free up $5.25 billion a year for mostly reusable launch vehicles and other components.

The Reason Foundation report by Simberg identifies five potential launch vehicles for the revised program: Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, New Glenn, Vulcan, and (soon) Starship. Multiple launches would deliver components and fuel into Earth orbit for assembly into Moon mission systems. Orbital assembly was used to build the International Space Station over many years. Moon mission systems, aided by rapid launches of reusable vehicles, would change that from many years to many months.

Reflecting increasing concerns by space technology experts on the huge cost and delays of the SLS program, the White House mini-budget for NASA called for terminating SLS after only two more launches. But study author Simberg argues that this approach is still too costly and too risky, given the overall SLS program track record. The study calls for “stopping the bleeding” by terminating the program now and quickly refocusing on the commercial space alternative.

Unfortunately, at the last minute in crafting its version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the Senate added a little-noticed provision to give NASA billions of dollars more for SLS Missions 4, 5, and 6, plus billions more for over-budget components, including the lunar-orbit Gateway station. The expedited House vote to approve the bill on President Donald Trump’s timeline before July 4 likely meant that most Republican House members may not have read it or known that this provision was in the bill they voted for. Vice President J.D. Vance cast the tie-breaking vote for the bill, which only received Republican votes in the Senate. It is unclear if Vance and President Trump, when he signed the bill, were aware of this provision that countermanded the declared White House policy on the SLS program.

Fortunately, those new outlays would be years in the future, and a new NASA administrator who appreciates the potential of commercial space could make a solid case for not spending those additional billions on what is increasingly viewed as a colossal boondoggle.

The full study, “Why commercial space should lead the U.S. return to the moon,” is here. And Simberg and I answer some frequently asked questions about this study here.

» return to top

Problems Continue to Plague U.S. Remote Towers
By Marc Scribner

Remote/digital air traffic control towers are increasingly mainstream around the world. As documented in a recent Reason Foundation report, covered in the May issue of this newsletter, dozens of remote/digital towers are currently in operation around the world, providing superior air traffic services at a fraction of the cost of conventional brick-and-mortar towers. What’s more, countries as varied as Italy, Norway, and Thailand are planning to deploy remote/digital towers at dozens of additional airports over the next five years.

Despite having developed the initial “virtual tower” concept two decades ago, the FAA has not approved any to be deployed in the United States. This growing air traffic technology gap has gained increasing attention on Capitol Hill, although the political scrutiny has to date not spurred meaningful action at the FAA.

On July 4, President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act budget reconciliation bill into law that contained $50 million (at Sec. 40003(a)(13)) to fund the Sec. 621 Remote Tower Program that was established by the May 2024 FAA reauthorization. In the following weeks, congressional appropriations committees in the House and Senate each approved their annual Transportation and Housing and Urban Development (THUD) spending bills for FY 2026.

The House THUD appropriations bill was passed by that chamber’s Appropriations Committee on July 17. It recommended $2 million in additional funding for the FAA’s remote tower program, as discussed on page 37 of the accompanying bill report. This was the same amount provided in the current FY 2025 appropriations law and $1 million short of what FAA had requested for FY 2026 (see FY 2026 FAA Budget Estimates – Facilities & Equipment page 56). The House THUD appropriations bill report also orders the FAA to brief the House and Senate Appropriations Committees within 180 days of enactment on the status of remote tower system design approval and deployment.

A week later, on July 24, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved its FY 2026 THUD appropriations bill. The accompanying bill report’s language on remote towers (page 44) recommended fully funding the FAA’s budget request at $3 million. In addition, the Senate’s oversight provision was significantly more aggressive than the House’s—ordering the FAA to report to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees on the agency’s remote tower program progress within 30 days of enactment rather than 180 days.

While it is too early to tell exactly what will happen as both chambers of Congress eventually negotiate FY 2026 THUD appropriations, the Senate appears to have an advantage. The House’s bill was highly partisan, passing the committee in a 35-28 vote with no Democratic support, due to a number of controversial provisions unrelated to air traffic control. In contrast, the Senate THUD appropriations bill was approved by the committee in a bipartisan 27-1 vote, which makes it a likely candidate to be fast-tracked to a floor vote by the Senate Majority Leader. The 60-vote threshold in the Senate requires the support of at least seven Democrats, so the odds do not favor the House’s partisan bill.

While Senate appropriators were more enthusiastic about remote towers than their House counterparts, it is good to see broad interest in Congress for this technology. The challenge will be sustaining that interest over time and ensuring the FAA follows through on what Congress has ordered it to do, especially from congressional authorizers on the House Transportation and Infrastructure and Senate Commerce Committees.

This is because, despite growing attention from Congress on the FAA’s remote tower program activities in recent years, the FAA is still moving forward at a glacial pace. Currently, a single vendor—a partnership between RTX (formerly Raytheon) and Frequentis—is undergoing system design approval testing at the FAA’s Technical Center in Atlantic City. RTX/Frequentis became the technology vendor for the Northern Colorado Regional Airport remote tower project after the original vendor, Searidge, quit in 2023 after five years of work due to the FAA’s Kafkaesque regulatory process.

According to internal FAA documents obtained by Reason Foundation earlier this year, the FAA’s sudden decision to publish new remote tower technical requirements on its website in June 2024 delayed the system design approval timeline for the RTX/Frequentis project by four months. While the RTX/Frequentis system is now installed and being tested at Atlantic City International Airport, testing is taking far longer than it should be due to a costly deviation from international best practices in a Sept. 2022 FAA decision.

FAA’s remote tower system design approval process requires vendors to install their technology in Atlantic City for initial evaluation and approval, rather than the standard global approach of testing candidate technology at the first airport where it would be deployed, if approved. A close observer of the FAA’s remote tower program tells me that one problem with the 2022 decision that all vendors must install their technology at Atlantic City International for system design approval testing is that the airport has a low volume of general aviation operations. This means that the FAA must hire aircraft to fly required test procedures—at substantial cost to the agency—rather than seeking volunteers at an airport with robust general aviation activity at no cost.

It is unclear by how much FAA’s centralized Atlantic City system design approval process is delaying remote tower progress, but best estimates for approval dates of the RTX/Frequentis system have slipped over the last year from Spring 2026, to Summer 2026, to sometime in 2027.

In Sec. 621 of the May 2024 FAA reauthorization, Congress ordered the FAA to expand the system design approval testing process to no fewer than three airports outside the Tech Center (codified at 49 U.S.C. § 47124(h)(3)). Unfortunately, the FAA has not begun implementing this directive. A Feb. 2025 video on the remote tower program produced by the FAA makes no mention of it. But even if the FAA had complied with this provision, restarting system design approval from intake likely would not save any time for RTX/Frequentis. And due to the FAA’s poor reputation among remote/digital tower technology vendors, no others are likely to enter the system design approval process unless RTX/Frequentis can prove that it is possible to complete it.

It is critical for Congress to maintain robust oversight of the FAA’s remote tower program, but it can only be expected to do so much. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy and FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford are in an excellent position to help and should closely examine the ongoing problems with the FAA’s remote tower program. Secretary Duffy, with President Trump’s support, has made modernization of air traffic control technology a top priority of the Department of Transportation. But if the FAA cannot certify a relatively basic new air traffic management technology that Romania successfully deployed in 2023, it bodes poorly for the administration’s much more ambitious “Brand New Air Traffic Control System.”

» return to top

Will Buying a Helicopter Company Be a Winner for Joby?

Joby is respected as one of a handful of electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) startups that are likely to achieve FAA certification within a few years and begin commercial operations. In a surprise move early this month, Joby announced the acquisition of long-time commercial helicopter operator Blade Air Mobility. Aviation Daily’s Ben Goldstein greeted this news as a way to de-risk Joby’s market-entry plans—and at first glance, that seems on-target.

First of all, Blade has operating certificates not only in the United States but also in Canada and southern Europe. Blade carried 50,000 passengers last year and has access to landing sites and terminals in key cities, saving Joby a bundle of money and time as it begins eVTOL operations in several years. And since it will own Blade from now on, it will have an additional source of revenue during its early years of eVTOL operations. Blade has also agreed that Joby will be its eVTOL partner for its profitable organ transport business (which Blade is retaining). Goldstein also cites the positive impressions of the deal from eVTOL analyst Sergio Cecutta, whom I have quoted several times in this newsletter.

But here are a few cautions from an aviation observer whose knowledge I appreciate, expressed Aug. 5 on an invitation-only online aviation discussion group. Without elaborating on his statement, here are his initial impressions.

“Blade loses money on pax [passenger] trips and makes good money on medical, I am told. They [Joby] are only buying the pax biz. They have sheds on wheels for lounges in NY so they can be trucked away, if needed. They own virtually no hard assets. Joby prides itself on its new app, but Blade already has one that works. So, $125M ($95M if certain terms are met) for a company with no assets [and] is loss-making seems like the deal of the century!”

I am in no position to vouch for either assessment, but am simply presenting these two views for you to ponder.

» return to top

Will Secondary Cockpit Barriers Be Delayed Yet Again?

While the threat of armed takeover of commercial aircraft seems to have decreased considerably over the past two decades, Congress (and pilots’ unions) have continued to push the FAA to mandate secondary barriers. The idea is to provide stronger protection for the cockpit when a crew member must exit to use the forward lavatory. Today’s practice of positioning a flight attendant with a service cart just aft of the lav is not much of a barrier.

Under pressure from Congress to enforce a 2018 statute mandating such barriers, the FAA cited the need for it to follow procedural rules before setting a deadline for retrofitting airliners. In 2022, the FAA issued a draft rule, but Airlines for America argued that it should apply only to newly certified aircraft, not including aircraft already in production but not yet completed or delivered. Airline unions insisted that the barriers be required for all airliners, including cargo planes.

In 2023, the FAA finalized its secondary barrier rule, which would apply to all newly delivered aircraft, per previous legislation. This final rule called for installations to begin within two years. But here we are in 2025, and major airlines are calling for another two-year delay. They argue that the FAA has not yet approved a design, and there are no manuals, procedures, or training programs.

At this point, it’s worth pausing to consider whether this additional protection against terrorist takeover of an airliner cockpit is still a sufficient enough threat to warrant the cost of secondary barriers. This subject has been addressed by aviation security researchers, and two of the best are Mark Stewart and John Mueller, authors of technical papers and their excellent 2018 book, Are We Safe Enough? Measuring and Assessing Aviation Security. They also produced a 2019 report on this specific topic, “Security Risk and Cost-Benefit Assessment of Secondary Flight Deck Barriers,” Centre for Infrastructure Performance and Reliability, University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia.

The results depend on the assumptions made about both costs and benefits. In the book, they found the benefit/cost ratio to be 75. But their updated analysis in 2019, based on feedback about the book chapter, led to a more conservative benefit/cost ratio of 41. Both sets of calculations were made without cost data from the FAA. In a 2022 email to me, Stewart used new cost information from the FAA to yield a revised benefit/cost ratio of 10, meaning the benefits of reduced/eliminated attacks were found to be worth 10 times the cost of the program.

One of the questions worth asking about such analyses is “compared to what?” Stewart and Mueller carried out a similar benefit/cost assessment for the Federal Air Marshals (FAM) program. Unlike the secondary barrier, which has only a one-time cost, the FAMs program has an ongoing annual cost of around $1 billion. Their resulting benefit/cost ratio for FAMs is a pathetic 0.03. So if Congress wants to get more bang for its aviation security bucks, it should abolish FAMs and require companies to retrofit secondary barriers to all current and future airliners. Airlines should welcome the freeing up of two front-cabin seats on all flights currently carrying FAMs.

» return to top

News Notes

FAA Supports ADS-B/In Mandate for All ADS-B/Out Aircraft
In a move long recommended by the NTSB, the FAA has announced that it will mandate the installation of ADS-B/In for not only new aircraft but also for all in-service aircraft that are required to be equipped with ADS-B/Out. Two bills to this effect were already pending in Congress by the time the Air Traffic Organization’s acting COO made the announcement on Aug. 1. With ADS-B/In, the cockpit crew will be able to see nearby traffic, both in the air and on the airfield. Had the regional jet that collided with the Army Black Hawk helicopter at DCA been so equipped, its crew would likely have seen the helicopter and aborted its landing (if the latter’s ADS-B/Out system had been operational).

FAA Funding Bill May Stimulate Performance-Based Navigation
The $12.5 billion in general fund money that Congress recently included in the One Big Beautiful Bill, signed into law on July 4, included $300 million to “fully implement” Performance-Based Navigation (PBN). The language says PBN should be implemented “for all terminal and en-route routes, including approaches and departures at about 40 large and medium hub airports.” The aim is for PBN to become a “primary means of navigation.” Aviation Week’s Sean Broderick points out that this plan was already included in the 2024 FAA reauthorization bill.

London Heathrow’s $65 Billion Modernization Plan
On July 31, privately owned London Heathrow Airport (LHR) submitted its plan for a third runway and new terminals, aimed at increasing its annual passenger capacity from 84 million annual passengers to 150 million, and flights from 480,000/year to 760,000. LHR announced that the project will be entirely privately financed. The same day Arora Group submitted a rival proposal including a shorter new runway that would not extend over the nearby M25 motorway, which might reduce some of the local opposition to the expansion. The Arora Group proposal’s cost of £25 billion is about half the £49 billion LHR proposal, but the terminal projects may be smaller than LHR’s. Arora also says its plan will be privately financed.

Mexico Airports Undergoing Changes
July brought news via Infralogic about two airport companies in Mexico. First, the government abandoned a plan to purchase investment fund Aleatica’s 49% stake in Toluca International Airport, because the price Aleatica wanted was too high. The State of Mexico already owns a 26% stake in Toluca. And on July 25, airport operator GAP (Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacifico) announced its interest in buying the airport assets of CCR, a Brazilian company that has ownership in or operating relationships with 20 airports across Latin America.

Boeing’s Wisk Aero Plans Autonomous Air Taxi Service by 2030
The only U.S. eVTOL startup that is planning for autonomous commercial passenger flights has announced plans to begin commercial passenger flights in Houston, Los Angeles, and Miami by 2030, according to an interview in SmartCities Dive. Reporter Dan Zukowski noted that the four-passenger eVTOLs will be both produced and operated by Wisk, which is partly owned by Boeing. Zukowski reported nothing about where Wisk Aero is in the FAA certification process. As of Aug. 2025, no piloted eVTOL has received FAA certification. It seems likely that this multi-year process will take longer for automated eVTOLs than for their piloted counterparts from Archer and Joby.

Skykraft Launches Five Air Traffic Satellites
Via a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch from the Vandenberg launch site in California, Australian company Skykraft in late July lofted five satellites into orbit for its planned space-based ADS-B and voice communication system. The company plans to compete with Aireon and several European startup companies in providing satellite-based air traffic management services.

DOT Inspector General to Review Newark Control in Philadelphia
The DOT Office of Inspector General on July 29 announced an investigation into the FAA’s shift of air traffic operations at Newark Airport (EWR) from the New York TRACON on Long Island (N90) to the Philadelphia TRACON. The reason for the move was a severe shortage of controllers (and other problems) at N90. Besides, the transferred controllers had to learn a new facility, and the EWR data had to be transmitted to Philadelphia by ancient copper wire cable rather than modern fiber optic cable. These cables are now being replaced.

Ardian Becomes Heathrow’s Largest Shareholder
Infrastructure fund Ardian last month bought out Ferrovial’s remaining stake in London Heathrow Airport, and now owns 32.6%, as the airport’s largest owner. Ardian’s initial stake was 22.6%, acquired in Dec. 2024. Paris-based Ardian is the 13th largest infrastructure investment fund according to a tally of the top 100 funds by Infrastructure Investor, based on each fund’s most recent five-year total capital raised.

Helsinki Airport Introduces Double-Boarding Bridges
At Helsinki Airport’s west pier, dual passenger boarding bridges have recently been introduced. For a large aircraft, one bridge can be used for the front cabin and the other for the coach cabin. For smaller planes, the plan is to accommodate two planes at the same boarding gate. New or recently upgraded boarding areas in both the south pier and the west pier are equipped for dual gates to be installed.

Air Force Testing F-35 Collision Avoidance
The Air Force Research Laboratory is testing a “collision avoidance manual deconfliction” system on an F-35 fighter plane. The aim of the project is to protect against collisions between military and civilian aircraft. Commercial aircraft are equipped with TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System), but “many” military fighters, bombers, and helicopters are not.

Breeze Replaces Avelo in Southern California
Within a week of Avelo announcing that it was leaving the Burbank, California airport, Breeze Airways announced that it will offer service from Burbank to five former Avelo routes: Bend, Eugene, Eureka, Pasco, and Provo. Breeze already serves LAX and John Wayne Airport in Orange County.

New Video Interviews Air Traffic Control Reform Expert
ReasonTV’s Eric Boehm interviews Dorothy Robyn, who has supported air traffic control reform since her days as a domestic policy advisor in the Bill Clinton White House. The new video is “Why Does the Government Run Air Traffic Control?“
 
Aviation Week Editorial on Digital Tower Centers
A guest Viewpoint editorial in Aviation Week makes the case for bringing to the United States the technology and productivity gains being realized in Europe by providing control tower services to multiple airports from a digital tower center. Bill Payne and David Hughes spotlight two proposed Colorado projects that would create such digital tower centers. For context, they discuss some of the cutting-edge examples in Europe. The Colorado projects would be models for what could be done on a much larger scale to replace aging control towers and to provide tower services to smaller airports that lack them. The piece is the full-page Viewpoint piece in the July 14-27, 2025 issue of Aviation Week.

» return to top

Quotable Quotes

“We’re not in the aviation system of the 1960s or 1970s. And the proposed [EU] legislation does not reflect a real analysis of what the traveling public wants. Over the past two decades, as LCCs have grown, we have seen a drop in ticket prices and a democratization of air travel, to the benefit of customers, tourism, and economies. But airlines have only been able to set the headline fare at a low price because they can break out other elements, such as faster boarding, inflight food or drink or a cabin bag. [Airlines] are commercial entities, and they have to make money, otherwise fares will go up, and that will exclude some people from travel.”
—John Strickland, in Helen Massy-Beresford, “Europe’s Airlines Say Cabin Baggage Changes Threaten Consumer Choice,” Aviation Week, July 14-27, 2025

“One big picture piece that I left out is really the role of Congress. Refusing year after year to grant budgets of long enough duration to implement large-scale projects absolutely eliminates the possibility of even remotely effective planning. Instead, every project decision FAA makes is reactive. Especially when funding levels are inadequate to meet safety needs, let alone pursue long-range innovation and development. All managers can do is respond to immediate developments—most often, sifting budget allocations that occur as managers attempt to balance competing project needs. I’ve seen these kinds of budget-driven developments occur over and over. I do have sympathy for those caught in this dilemma, [but] I lose patience when some of the short-term workarounds prove less efficient in the long term. But there is no shortage of contractors to provide FAA managers with seemingly attractive solutions.”
—A retired FAA systems engineer, email to Robert Poole, June 24, 2025

“As we all know, an airline seat that takes off empty can never be sold again. And carrying a marginal passenger comes at extremely low cost to an airline. Most of the expense of the trip is baked in—the plane, crew, fuel. Airlines have gotten much better at filling seats. And they try to maximize revenue—yet the real cost of a ticket has fallen over time, inclusive of fees. That’s no accident. Airlines will sell that marginal seat for almost any amount they can get for it. Except they don’t want to offer a lower fare to someone that would buy a seat anyway, at a higher fare. And so airlines go to great length to price discriminate, i.e., to segment customers. AI is a tool to get more granular with price discrimination. And so it seems reasonably likely that it will be used to figure out whom to offer those lower fares to, filling more seats at even lower fares but only offering those prices to people who wouldn’t buy at all at a higher price. This way, airlines can fill seats and generate incremental revenue without cannibalizing existing higher-yield traffic. Our best defense against AI pricing of the imagined parade of the horribles sort is competition.”   
—Gary Leff, post on online aviation discussion group, July 23, 2025 (Used with his permission)

» return to top

The post Aviation Policy News: NTSB hearing details FAA institutional failure appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Source: https://reason.org/aviation-policy-news/ntsb-hearing-details-faa-institutional-failure/